


Rivaini Rainbow, Fereldan Snow

by DinosaurTheology



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Conversations, F/M, For Science!, Multi, mythopoesis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-01
Updated: 2015-03-01
Packaged: 2018-03-15 18:17:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3457067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DinosaurTheology/pseuds/DinosaurTheology
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Varric and Isabela discuss the various skin tones of Thedas and come to some conclusions based on both science and legend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rivaini Rainbow, Fereldan Snow

I does not own Dragon Age, I just love it so much that I can't leave it alone.

***

Isabela drained her flagon of ale in one long, well-practiced gulp. It was gritty, night-dark and burned going down. In short, the sort of thing that the Hanged Man was reasonably famous for all over the Free Marches. She drew the back of her wrist across her lips and sighed. "Okay, Varric, so I've been thinking."

"Really?" He cracked his knucles and took a swallow of his own drink. "That usually ends up in someone getting naked, robbed or dead. Sometimes all three, if you're feeling particularly spunky."

"They don't always." She smiled. "Sometimes it just ends with drunken debauchery and singing. Right under Aveline's window."

"Which could, eventually, lead to murder. Aveline has pretty good aim when she decides to chuck a chamber pot at a fellow's head."

"Donnic seems to like our little concerts, though. I think it makes him feel all romantic."

"Okay, okay." Varric raised his hands in surrender. "So you're only doing what you do out of concern for our illustrious Guard Captain's sex life. I've heard, told and, hell, lived stranger stories. I'll buy that one for a copper or two. So..." he steepled his fingers. "If not that, Rivaini, what's on your mind."

"Strangely enough, Rivain."

"Oh? You thinking of heading home for a while, looking in on family?"

"Maker, no." Isabela shuddered. "If I do have any family left in Llomerryn that I would want to meet then I figure they wouldn't be the kind of folks who'd want to meet me, if you take my meaning."

"Sort of how I think I'd feel about any Tethras who wasn't a Surfacer. Or... any other Tethras, for that matter, considering Bartrand."

"Right as rain. Anyway, what I have been thinking about are Rivaini ourselves... our skin, more specifically."

"Isabela..." Varric shook his head. "Have you been mixing deep mushrooms and giant spider venom into your wine, again?"

"No, that was just the one time, and all it did was make me dream the most fascinating dreams for a week."

"While you were up, walking around and--if memory serves--exploring a ruin with Hawke, Merrill and me."

"You must admit, the clues that my friend the enormous silver and purple gurgut offered were incredibly helpful, and provided excellent aid in defeating Lizelti, the Fade's Stupidest Desire Demon."

Varric laughed. "We might have done okay with her anyway. Who would have ever believed that your innermost desire would have been pants, mine a razor and Merrill's a mirror--any mirror would do."

"Or that the deepest, darkest need of Declan Hawke, noted lover of the people, would have been a partner with flat ears and no vallaslin."

"Still, Rivaini, you had us a little worried. You thought that your Dagger of Four Winds was a lap nug for a few minutes, there, and tried to give it a little kiss."

She waved away his concern. "What I mean is that I've been thinking about how many different skin colors are present in Rivain, compared to most of the other nations I've visited." She thought a moment. "Well, apart from Tevinter and Orlais, but they're really not just single nations at all."

"Hmmm..." Varric stroked his stubbly chin, a sure sign he'd been provoked into finding something intriguing. "You do have a good point, I think."

"I know I do, and not just on the ends of my daggers." She offered her own bare arm. It was smoothly muscled, lightning quick and, in the dancing lantern light, a little darker than walnut meat. "Those of us from Llomerryn and Ayesleigh are colored like me. We're a rather tawny, wheat color--similar to Antivans--and a few folks from those cities even have reddish hair and fair eyes. We're very similar to them in temperment and culture, too. Although..." she wrinkled her nose. "I've never met a Rivaini who could grow angry as quickly, or hold a grudge as long, as the gentlest Antivan, no matter where she was born."

"Amen to that."

Isabela went on, warming to her topic. She gestured to a pair of sailors taking shore leave in the Hanged Man, fellow Rivaini judging by their looks and the talismans hanging around their necks. "Take those men in the corner, for example. I'd say they were from Seere, if pressed, or viddathari from Kont-aar."

"I'd say you have a good eye, Rivaini."

"It's child's play, if you know what you're looking for. The men from those cities are so dark that their skin can appear almost blue, at times." She assumed a languid, dreamy expression and her eyes fell out of focus, much like they had during the aformentioned adventure in alchemy. "It glimmers so wonderfully when bare, under moonlight."

"I'll take your word for it." Varric snapped his fingers under Isabela's nose. "I'm losing you, Queen of the Waking Sea. Come back to us and I'll make sure to include a couple of viddathari sailors from Kont-aar in my next story."

Isabela purred. "That's an idea that I can fully support."

"Glad to be of service." Varric indicated to a nearby waitress that more ale was required and, maybe, if the two Rivaini gentlmen in the corner wanted some too he could pay for it. Although most men enjoyed Isabela's undivided attention--or an entire adventuring party could enjoy it, if said attention did end up divided--these boys were new in town and didn't know the rules. They might have considered such a forceful stare the prelude to brawling, an assassination or blood magic. "Now, you were saying?"

"Ah, right. Now, the men and women of Dairsmuid, in the center of Rivain, have skin that is dark, but does not have the blue black sheen of those from the north. They're more reddish in hue, and..." She pursed her lips, "They consider it fashionable for a people to pluck all the hair from their heads, faces and bodies."

Varric clutched protectively at his thatch of impressive, straw colored chest hair. "Say it's not so."

"Truly! I can understand below the neck, if that's what you're into, but not everything."

"I would never even consider it."

"In your case, darling, it would be a crime against the Maker. And, of course, the death of every razor from here the Korcari Wilds to Par Vollen."

"That's why we dwarves grow it so thick. Works like a second suit of armor up under our mail."

"You know, that actually makes a great deal of sense."

"Really?"

"No, sorry. Anyway, I have noticed--as a corollary to there being so many different shades of skin in my own tiny little homeland of Rivain--that there is a noticeable lack of anything but pallor in the entire, rather enormous kingdom of Fereldan."

"I don't know if that's entirely true, Rivaini." Varric counted on his stubby, thick fingers. "Declan and Bethany are paler than you, and their mother for that matter, but both of them are darker than Merrill. She, in turn, is a bit darker than Aveline."

"Varric, darling, everyone is darker than Aveline. She boils and peels in spring, summer, fall and even winter, on a particularly nice day. Remember when we went to the Wounded Coast after those Tal-Vashoth, last summer, and she wore that giant, ridiculous straw hat to keep the sun off?"

"That's what I mean, actually. All four of them are Fereldan, and all of them have different skin tones--even if Aveline is just a whiter shade of pale."

"Right, right." Isabela waved her hand. "You're proving my point. It's just a matter of degrees, for Fereldans, where I look very little like Madame Vivienne de Fer, the Orlesian court enchanter, and she in turn is colored little like our seafaring friends in the corner."

"Okay, I take your point." Varric found his tankard empty, and wondered if this growing state of inebriation might have been responsible for his mercurial friend making so much sense. He wouldn't have been surprised. Nonetheless, he gestured for another cup. "I do have a theory about why Fereldans are so pale."

"Oh, do tell. Please."

"Well, it has to do with the fabled King Calenhad and his ill-fated lover, Lady Shayna." Varric reared back and clasped his hands, warming to the tale. "They would wander for days in the Frostback Mountains, frolicking naked under a pale, cold winter sun. The two would hunt wolves and Great Bears for their food, drink of the clear, icy mountain brooks and make love to one another in the powdery banks of snow." He shook his head. 

"It was a sweeter, more innocent time, before the coming of their trials. The Great Mountain Father was pleased by their love and blessed them, decreeing that the snow would cling to their bodies in perpetuity. This is why Fereldans have skin fair as snow to this very day. The more Fereldan a person is, the brighter the snow shines. That's why Aveline is so much paler than the entire world. I can't think of anyone more Fereldan than her."

"But her freckles...?"

"Pah." Varric grinned, entirely too pleased with his own cleverness. "That's just the legacy of her father, the Orlesian chevalier, shining through. It represents all the drops of blood spilled as they pursue the Great Game. Her hair is the same thing, representing his crimson banner as it trails through the cool air."

"Hmm." Isabela's face scrunched; it was an expression Varric usually found adorable, and often the prelude to something either insightful or mad. "I don't think your story really makes all that much sense."

"What?" He feigned offense. "I'm the professional here, you Llomerynn cutthroat."

"Yes, yes, I know... but I have a theory of my own."

"Go on."

"I think that it probably has to do with our ancestors. Mine were in a hotter place for longer--and those in Seere hotter still--than Aveline's or the Hawkes'. Just like a man or woman will become tanned from sitting in the sun--unless that woman is Aveline, and she just turns red and lobstery and cries if you poke her--I think that many generations of people who sit in the sun for many, many years will become naturally tanned, from birth, so that they are more able to handle more sun and hotter weather from the time that they are little babies."

Isabela went on, becoming excited. "Fereldans, like Aveline, spend generations under the clouds and enormous piles of dog. They are much better at surviving in cold, horrible weather and enduring a reek of Mabari that clings to everything." She shivered. "I could barely even handle spring and autumn in Denerim and it's the warmest place in the whole blighted kingdom."

"I don't know, Rivaini... it lacks poetry."

"It may not be poetic but I think it's right." This tone usually meant that the conversation was over. "It doesn't have to be poetic to be right. Two by two isn't, but it still always makes four."

"All right, all right, you win." He slapped ten silvers on the splintered table to cover their bill--Maker, had they really drunk that much? 

"I did? Good. What do I get for it?"

"Well, I just bought a hat shop in Lowtown and haven't checked it over yet. You want to come along?"

"Oooh..." She grinned. "I like big hats almost as much as I like big boats."

"Then the biggest one is all yours, captain, all yours." She might have heard, or maybe not, being already halfway out the door in the fluttering of a white tunic and purple wrap. Varric stood, cracked his back and shouldered Bianca. There wasn't any such thing as a dull day in their little circle of friends, no matter how much you might want one on occasion.


End file.
